Beyond the Bridge
by Demon's Dance
Summary: In the Events that followed the SAO incident as known by many survivors, Mod Author and immersion gamer Christie Forrest has found herself distraught by the monotony and tedium of a normal life. That changed when she discovers the original coding for Aincrad and Sword Art Online. And now she has dragged herself and others into SAO again. Only this time with some "upgrades"


Beyond the Bridge; An SAO fanfiction

Prologue

There was a point in Christie Forrest's life when she realized that nothing was quite what it seemed on the surface. That sometimes there were hidden messages between the lines of things we experienced in everyday life, whether it be from eating a simple meal, or deciding to take a shower, using the bathroom, anything really. There was a small satisfaction gained from every little detail from every single experience, and that the feeling of being alive was one of the greatest feelings one could imagine. That sometimes even the most trivial of things sometimes have a profound effect on people's perception of the world.

And that point was when she signed up for the Beta of Sword Art Online. There was an appeal to the game that she just couldn't ignore. As it was the first virtual reality game to convert to Massively Multiplayer, there was the general rush of tech enthusiast and 'hardcore' gamers to obtain beta keys to this game. Many of them without any sort of experience at all in gaming, some of them were celebrities simply trying to make a name for themselves by basically screaming out 'here I am in this game, it has my endorsement! Throw money at both me and the screen!'

Christie honestly considered these people an affront to the premise of beta testing. Of course they would all throw their hands in the air and say it was awesome from the beginning. They hadn't experienced immersion like that in a game ever before, and the only reason they hadn't felt it before was honestly because they never gave a second thought to 'how can this be better?'

Now Christie wasn't the kind of girl gamer everyone envisioned when they thought of one. She wasn't the flawless beauty of men's dreams, but neither was she the fat slob of a girl with nothing better to do with her time than sit around her computer all day and…

Well on second thought, that really was all she did all day, but her lack of weight was never due to a lack of exercise, but rather the lack of time to get up to get anything to eat at all. Eating detracted from the experience and only when she was absolutely on the verge of passing out would she seek nourishment; often doing so to the words.

"This mortal form has grown weak! I require sustenance!" she would shout much to her mother's annoyance.

Her mother was not an unkind woman, but much rather a determined and ambitious woman whom seemed very distraught that her daughter had no such ambition to rise through the ranks of the family business and inherit the Natural Gas Company her mother had pioneered.

She was quite distraught that her little girl seemed to have no other inclination but to continuously play her video games on the computer. It wasn't even like the girl had any inclination to enter the industry itself.

Even that she would have approved, but for the love of all things monetary, the girl she had raised since birth was as obstinate as her mother was before her.

But needless to say, gaming wasn't the only skill Christie had adopted in her time, (In fact Christie herself hardly referred to it as a skill, but rather a winding branch of a very large skill tree) She had since her discovery of it upon the PC world, opened herself up to the modding community of gaming.

She had learned of the art of modding the games to her own design, making works of art out of already existing scripts and textures within the games themselves.

Not only that, but it had begun a long obsessive trend with her seeking to make games harder, just for the sake of them being harder. Or rather to seek the closest aspect of realism as she possibly could with the tools granted.

Utilizing other's mods and her own simply to make herself forget the fact that was she was playing was in fact a game.

But never once was she truly able to create something new. She wasn't quite artistically gifted enough to make something fresh from scratch, so she just made due with aspects from other pre-existing entities form her 'perfect version' of a game she already adored.

There was always one great obstacle to her desires though, and that was the glaring screen in front of her reminding her that whenever she looked just a little to the side she was in fact playing a game.

Whilst that may have been a good thing to any other human being, Christie was not quite so prepared to simply live in the present day and age.

It was all so boring, so dull, there were no real amazing things in the real world because people like her mother wanted her to 'conform to reality' She didn't dislike her mother for it, but she still felt compelled by something to reject her words.

So needless to say, when Kayaba Akihiko had announced the creation of a Virtual completely immersive fantasy experience, Christie was among the first to sign up for the beta testing of the game. And luckily enough she was able to get in! It was like the entire world had granted her long awaited wish.

She had enjoyed the beta as any person gaining early access would, however she always thought there was something missing, like there were certain aspects simply unfinished or in need of 'Just one more mod' But nonetheless the beta had delivered exactly what it had promised which was something so very missing in the modern age of video games. In an era where a game meant an unfinished project that always required patches from the developers (or Modders willing enough to correct the wrongs in an otherwise perfectly substantial baseline) A game that not only lived up to its hype, but (in her opinion) exceeded it was something that bordered beyond rare towards the realm of impossible.

It seemed as though an era of disappointing titles and overhyped flops was about to draw to a final close as the ultimate competition had set the bar of gaming so high.

But for many that would not last long.

For on the very first day it was announced that the players could not log out, and that it was not some defect in the game's design, but rather the point of the game's design.

It was one of the many special features in this seemingly unlimited game.

It was also announced that, if any of their HP dropped below zero during the course of the game that not only would their character die; they would die as well. Their brains fried inside their own skulls and their families unable to help them as they simply passed on; the consequences of seemingly just another pointless video game.

It was in this moment that Christie fully understood the weight of the situation that she was in, and as the rest of the world reverted back to their original appearance a thought dawned on Christie.

As the glass reflection revealed the cute freckled ginger haired girl beneath the previously beautiful flawless avatar she had spent countless hours detailing, she came under the realization that this was the fully immersive experience promised. And with all this swirling in her mind, whilst the rest of the world seemed to be gripped by panic and fright, even contempt in some, Christie could only laugh.

She was happy about this, she was happy about the whole situation! Everything about it just screamed what she had wanted the entire time. She was truly one with the video game world and everything she had ever striven for had been revealed in a few minutes within this 'death game'. The epic quests, the countless hours spent trying to escape the monotony of reality, the pondering over life and death situations, and overall just the entire feel of the game had been made all the more complete.

One mistake and she was dead; for real.

And the fact that there was no turning back at this point made it feel all the more immersive. She had felt nothing more complete in her life as she traversed through the levels of Sword Art Online. Gaining experience wherever it could be found, scraping for skills to survive on her own, and generally just making it through the best she could, it was all a part of the gaming experience.

And then, in one moment, it was just taken away.

All of it.

All of the effort.

All of the bloodshed

All of the tears, friends lost, and friends gained

All of it was just ended early and spat upon. She had been cheated out of her ultimate victory and all of it by the most infuriating of people she could possibly imagine.

A Casual Little Fuck named Kirito.


End file.
